Viva.

Sometimes I think there’s one key facet of health that may transcend all others: living inspired. I was helping a workmate with an errand this week when he asked why I got my Masters degree in Religious Studies. I had started out pre-med so I could go into preventative medicine, but realized that what I was really drawn to was attuning the soul to its divine purpose – and letting that spell of happiness give the cells of life a bliss bath, daily.

My rolfer relayed an anecdote to me once about one of his clients— a runner who loves what she does. He said that her body was so free of tightness and holding patterns that it had a different quality to it than other bodies he worked on. He attributed it to the fact that she was aligned with what she was here to do. She was happy.

In the words of Rob Breszny: “Any media-brainwashed automaton can summon the insipid courage to peer into the horrifying abyss. But it takes a freaking genius with a fearless imagination to peer into the maw of happiness.” And the beautiful thing is, all that happiness is yours for the taking. Step into it and revel in it. Let it fill you up.

As beings in constant communion with the world, all we need is to let our experience rush in and fill us up – to live richly in all the details and textures. The innate joy in the fullness of your presence is there, waiting for you to feel it. When you live in touch with the deep wellspring of life force pulsing within and align with your soul purpose, you glow from the inside out. This is what it means to live an inspired life.

When what you do aligns with what you want and where you’re going, good things happen, as if the universe opens up to you. But all too often, I find people stuck in a fog of unknowing, often with ideas that need a place to land—or a plan for success.

“You always go for what you want. You’re so clear,” my mom would always say to me. “How do you know?” she would ask.

“I just know,” I would reply with little explanation, a shrug and a smile. The clarity was a full-bodied knowing – and a sense of the pull coming from where I was headed, bodying forth into a future that was calling me into it — even if I didn’t have a mental understanding of what that notion was.

Any artist will tell you that the impetus for creation comes from an ambiguous place and unfolds before them in the process — but it’s about trusting that first core gut intuition that creates space for great art. But you have to be listening and ready for the messages.

Knowing what you want requires clarity of thought and the ability to sit with yourself, to know yourself in a way that your heart’s song sings loud and clear, and you can trust your inner compass. It starts with getting in touch with everything in life that lights you up and turns you on and makes you come ALIVE.

Whenever I feel stuck or lackluster in the ‘zest for life’ department, I spruce things up with a subversively simple exercise of fearless creative play to let my whole self love what it loves by making a collage or vision board. When I look back through the big vision boards that I’ve made, I see notable themes – no matter what magazines are at my disposal. Each time, there is more refinement and more of a reflection of where I’m currently at – and what my hopes for the future are at that moment in time and space.

Since 2009, I’ve been keeping a manifest journal — starting with a black hardcover book with blank pages and pouring into it all my thoughts, visions, dreams, fragments from the day, inspirations, to-do lists and mini-collages. This process has its own sort of magic that lends itself to the personal process of transformation and the planting bed for grounding ideas in the world. In this way, the whole book (or set of books) becomes one continuous manifesting exercise.

The vision board process is nothing new. It is, however, a wonderfully accessible medium for fearless play in the creative space that can reconnect you to all that you love in the world. And if the intentions behind the experience are set, the process is fuel for igniting positive change. As a montage of clippings from magazines of images that grab your attention and text that speaks to you, vision boards can be a reminder of what lights your fire, can make you smile and light you up from the inside out.

Whenever I need to create something, to shift energy or get out of my headspace I always turn to the stack of magazines until I have collected enough images to make play in the pages of my journal. I’m always amazed at what happens just by giving myself time to listen to that inner voice. When I look back over the seemingly random collage of text and image fragments, I read it like a soul map with a regained sense of affirmation and clarity—and most often new insights that create a positive shift towards what I want or where I want to be.

Like life itself, the process of creating is what is important and can be used to facilitate a myriad of results.

- a space for creative play

– to shift or spark creative energies

– to create space for focusing on intentions

– to realign with what lights your fire

– as an exercise in starting and finishing a creative project, fearlessly

– to see just what the soul has to say in the space between…

There is much magic in that space of play and creativity if you allow your self to bask in that space often and give yourself the time to feel what makes you come alive as you tune into the rhythm of your own heart. As Howard Thurman said: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

About Ali Schultz

Ali Schultz is a Boulder, Colorado, based writer, artist, and beautiful web-builder: the chief creative conspirator of Auspicious Projects, her creative consultancy—a place of soul and savvy where ideas are brought to life in text, image and tech. Cut from a star in a nearby galaxy and born on the cusp of a full moon in Virgo, she believes firmly in the pursuit of human excellence and that dreams are divine callings. She dishes up art, creativity and inspiration at her blog, love.life.art.work. Find her on twitter @manifestcookies.

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